County eyes improvements to historic courthouse

Built in 1938, the Lincoln County Courthouse in Pioche has served longer as the seat of county government than the famed Million Dollar Courthouse (1873-1938).

And from time to time, the building needs painting as well as interior and exterior upgrading.

County Planning and Building Director Cory Lytle told the Record recently that, “the biggest need is to repaint the exterior and repair some of the sloughing on the top parapet on the concrete that has flaked off and make some repairs to the exterior windows. It may be close to 20 years since it was done last.”

Due to the age of the building, Lytle said, “I’ve always got a laundry list of needed upgrades. What we also want to do is some interior painting in the hallways; some of the old plaster is cracking and we need to repaint.”

Another issue Lytle mentioned was seeking to improve ADA access to the county commission meetings held in the commission chambers on the basement floor. “The back door that comes through the old building department office (the former sheriff’s department), I would like to regrade the slope outside that door and fix it to where there is a nice accessible entrance into the basement and put a vestibule where that door is, so windswept debris doesn’t blow in, plus create a few more parking spaces.”

In 2018, some additional landscaping was done on the outside, but Lytle said he purposely did not do the eastern corner at the time. “There are lots of little things that we can do. We nose into these things kind of softly so as hopefully to not exceed our budget.”

Another glaring need at the courthouse is a larger women’s restroom on the main floor. “Currently, there is only one stall, allowing for only one person to be in there at a time and it’s very inconvenient when the courthouse is busy, for example, on days when court is in session or just a busy work day for the staff,” he said.

Lytle said plans call for constructing an addition to the building at the end of the hall by the treasurer and district attorney offices. “We have the engineering plans. It’s a nice addition where there would be an open foyer and two restrooms. We’d open up that west of the hallway. However, the cost to build commercial square footage like that is rather spendy.”

Part of the same addition, Lytle mentioned, would be a stairway, “like a service stairway to the third floor. The offices up there only have one exit at this time, down the stairs at the east end of the building. The new addition would then give the third floor a secondary exit for emergency purposes. And then, below, we’d add some storage and vault space.”

He said he has a few other plans to finish up some of the landscaping work on the west end of the building. “It also is on the list, and like a number of other projects, it all falls within the timing of when we can fit it into our schedule in the summertime.”